threegee

Well, you've spelt it right! I hear there was a major conspiracy to deprive Bedlington of it's main-line railway station. The one Stevenson planned to build here. The hoi-paloi of the County diverted the main East Coast line through that stink-hole of Morpeth at huge extra cost, and so were forced to build Morpeth Station in a weird place on the other side of the river. Bedlington would have been a far larger place as a railway terminus for the coast line, not to mention the benefit to our local pits. So.. once again we wus robbed! Hanging ain't good enough for them toffs I say.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/avdb/news/uk/v...?ad=1&ct=50 A posting on Yahoo says: So.. if they hadn't issued a gagging order, and the whole thing had been in the open - like mere mortal's cases - it would have gone unnoticed, or at least have blown over by now. Wonder how much the whole charade cost the taxpayer?

Putting a gagging order on topical news is a "red rag" to the Internet.

Hmmm... to easy then with so much info available by simply Googling? OK, next week we are going to do it differently. Answers won't show until the weekend so everyone gets a fair chance. Everyone will get one point for a correct answer, and we will tot up weekly results each season to give four winners a year. The overall winner for the past four seasons will hold the Brain of Bedlington title (working title). Anyone with any questions with a local flavour please PM them to me. We need some topical/pop questions so's "old lags" won't have an unfair advantage. Thanks.

This week it's all about numbers: * Add the number of all the main roads joining (or running along) Bedlington Front Street. (e.g. A68 = 68, B2721 = 2721) No single road number to be added more than once. * From the above total subtract the year of the next (London) Olympic Games. * From the above result subtract the number of scan lines in an American (USA) TV picture. (UK system is of course 625 lines) * From the above result subtract the street number of The Grapes. The result is: ???? No posting part answers to help other people please. All your own work!

Close, but no cigar! The answer is Skype Zones Full list here: http://skypezones.boingo.com/search.html ----------------------------------- Standby for this week's quiz.

You've really got to spend some time playing to see how it works. But there's no worry about messing-up as you can re-edit as many times as you can be bothered. If you have tried and still have a problem PM me by clicking my name on one of my posts and selecting Send Message. Doing this for any user brings up the PM system in your own control panel with the person's name you want to contact already filled.

You've got 10MB of upload space here. If you need more simply PM. Some members already have 50MB or more. The attachments box is below the posting window, it tells you there how much space you have left. If there are problems then I need to know. If you need examples on how to do anything there's also [bB Code Help] button just below the posting window to the right. How to do most things in a post is pretty well illustrated there.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7061603.stm Seems to me that Sir Al Aynsley-Green should return his obscene salary and/or resign. He's clearly out of touch with both public opinion and stark reality. Wonder how his own kids turned out, and if he practises what he preaches?

It's OK; we have the audacity - we can rebuild it! Better, faster, more cutting! It's now called Hometown but sadly I'm stuck for a rhyme with crack cocaine for the third verse! :D

On a lighter note [no pun intended]: There's room for a great song here (to the tune of Wheels on Fire). Bins on Fire Standing In Haigh Road Notify the W-D-C That Bin could Explode! --- Chorus: Run'n get the Fire Brigade... the Fire Brigade.. to put the Bins all out... Run'n get the Fire Brigade... the Fire Brigade.. the Bedlingtonians shout!

I believe Goebbels thought the same way!

Another clue: The SHOULD be able to answer this question at The Ridge Farm. But I'm not putting money on that!

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=677124 http://forum.truckersworld.co.uk/viewtopic...2680fa2cdf05649 Give another ISP a try before you shoot the pianist. But first clear your browser cache and check there aren't local problems. Are you using broadband or dial-up? If you PM me I will show you how to find out where any congestion is.

Did read your earlier post, but last time I looked there was no law that says I had to reply to it! Where are these other complaints then? Server is very lightly loaded. Seldom running at about more than 10% CPU, so I'm afraid we will just have to agree to disagree. Yes, we could put the site on our UK machine to reduce the ping time a bit, but there are several reasons why not at present. If you've got a half decent transatlantic connection via your ISP, and everything else is equal, then the site has good performance. What you experience on the Internet is seldom what other people experience. Point me at a site that you *think* is faster to load and I will run some comparisons.

BBC News Item:- Former miners in damages victory

Feel I must report that Schalksmuehle (rather like Goebbels) has none at all! And... the UK is winning by about 8 to 1 on this at the moment - no penalty shoot-out this time round!

Think technology. And no, it's not 24Mbit ADSL connections. fourgee probs had the first of those. Though I'm not quite sure why!

The site is not slow. Change your ISP - they have a lousy connection to the USA, where all the Internet happens.

The UK have more than twice as many as the entire USA, and is a World leader in? Newcastle have 18 of? Ashington have 3 of? Cramlington have 5 of? ..and Bedlington only have one of (the same as Afghanistan and Egypt)?

Apache stopped delivering pages. Ditto to about 40+ other sites. Wasn't noticed because everything else was working and the status panel said that Apache was running OK and gave it a green. Someone from over the water had to e-mail me to point out the prob. Shame on you Bedlington! Sorry - a full refund is in the post.

Uuummm that must have been moi then! One of the very few posts I've seen absolutely no merit in. This despite the lame attempt at self-censorship by way of the casual use of the asterisk key. Despite proximity, the very latest own acquaintance with The MT would have been circa 1989/90 (lunch-time menu only). I hereby promise to remedy this appalling oversight any month soon, and will report thereon from the zimmer frame perspective. Otherwise... count me totally out-of-the-loop, multiple thinly veiled expletives in postings excepted.

Three points here: Flotation: You can't sell something to those who already own it - the members! As to your "Gnomes of Zurich" theory: The only other person I knew who benefited from the flotation lived in a council house in Blyth and was "on the social"! I advised her not to sell, but after a while the temptation became too much. She did OK though. Bust: They went belly-up because their forward commitments exceeded their forward borrowing powers - just like many of the customers they repossessed homes from. Essentially they put all their eggs in the interbank market, instead of spreading risk around, like any prudent borrower. If they'd stuck to their historic financing arrangments (e.g. you, me, and their other Bedlington branch customers) they'd have ridden out the storm. Shareholder's Money: No, it wouldn't have. It will have been slipped under the radar as an insignificant - but necessary, and easily affordable - contribution to the area. Compared with the astronomic sums being bandied about in the annual accounts it was indeed so. As too are the unnecessarily high directors fees chums on the board vote other chums on the board. But... margins are ultra-thin in this biz - else why close the Bedlington branch and inconvenience thousands of customers (who will need servicing anyway, if they are not to be lost) to save a few tens of thousands of pounds? In the immortal words of Mandy R-D Well they would say that, wouldn't they? By some reckoning the shareholders are wiped out several times over, and consequently so is their trustee's ill-judged investment in the mother ship. But look at the people involved, and it's easy to see why this sort of thing too frequently happens to trust funds tied to commercial organisations. Annual accounts are a statement of history past. Even at the best of times they don't reflect current trading. And, the directors of any organisation that can't meet its future liabilities are guilty of a criminal offence if they continue to trade. Naturally, I'm with the "some readers" on this one!

Precisely my point! It wasn't their money to throw around. Strictly it was attributable to shareholders who were/are taking all the risks. Did they ask the shareholders or customers to sanction this? But.. it's the (already overpaid) board who take credit for this prior beneficence. With hindsight they needed larger capital reserves. A huge misjudgement that the board should take full responsibility for. Business should be run as businesses; it's in nobody's long-term interest that it should be otherwise. Steer clear of any company that employs figure-head directors for who they are rather than what they are achieving day to day! High-rise office blocks with huge illuminated signs are another warning that even the biggest vessel is never *that* far away from the rocks when the inevitable storm breaks.

I'm not sure that there's any disagreement here. You think they used "shoddy business tactics" and I think that they betrayed their customers and betrayed our Town. On the other hand you think the "charitable" contributions are redeeming, and I think that their real (and legal) duty was to their customers and shareholders, and not the self glorification of the "great and good" on the Northern Rock board. This, ultimately, at someone else's expense. The only difference here is that I have experience of how big company politics work, and you don't! Believe me it's as mind numbingly shabby as anything our local politicians could contemplate! The "rats" on the Northern Rock board will desert the sinking ship with all the obscene fees they have "earned" safe and clear, but will never - ever - be brought to book. That's how this particular sub-system works.